Tremendous changes have been occurring in the Internet that influence everyday lives of people. Online social networks have become part of many people's daily routines and meeting grounds. The development of such online social networks has already touched countless aspects of social lives, providing convenient access to people of similar interests and hobbies, and enabling people to make friends in more ways than ever before.
Today, a search of the data of contacts is generally allowed in most popular social network because it is not regarded as a violation of privacy. Most social network sites have begun to allow users to perform a search about their friends to find items of mutual interest within their network database. However, at least two problems exist with current user contact search features: (i) user search capabilities are not able to be restricted by the contacts being searched; and (ii) no ability to restrict contact to users who are not direct contacts of the searching user.
Firstly, most networks (social, service or otherwise) that allow for contact searches are unrestricted, such as those utilized by dating and matchmaking websites, allowing for users to search for other contacts/users by one or more attributes, but users have no way to prevent their information from being searched (except perhaps entirely by deleting or suspending their profiles).
Secondly, no network (social, service or otherwise) provides the ability for requiring users to make contact to an indirect contact through one or more direct contacts, thereby preventing cold contacts in situations where an indirect user may not wish to be contacted by users not referred by one or more of their direct contacts.
In many cases, it would be desirable to have a network of any type that (i) allows for contact searches which non-direct contacts could preemptively decide to be not included in and further, whether in combination with the previous requirement or independently, (ii) require any indirect contact made be done through an intermediary or middleman who is a direct contact to the targeted indirect contact.
Therefore, there is need in the art for a computer based systems and methods for (i) extending contact searches to indirect contacts beyond a user's direct contacts and (ii) restricting user contact to indirect contacts through use of an intermediary or middleman. These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.